One of the groups that contributed to Andrew Scheer’s successful campaign to win the Conservative leadership — the Campaign Life Coalition — is now accusing the Conservative party of preventing two pro-life candidates from seeking the nomination in the Toronto riding of Scarborough-Agincourt.

The Conservative party announced Saturday that banking professional Dasong Zou would run for the vacant seat, previously held by the late Liberal MP Arnold Chan. Chan’s widow Jean Yip announced she would seek the Liberal nomination in October, just over a month after her husband died of cancer.

Campaign Life Coalition supported Allan Tam and Sarah Chung. Tam did not apply before the deadline, according to the party, and Chung was disqualified. In an interview on a Chinese YouTube talk show, Jack Fonseca, a spokesperson for Campaign Life Coalition, said that Chung was informed she was disqualified as a candidate, so she appealed, won her appeal — and then was disqualified again.

“In this particular nomination, we had two candidates that we qualified as being pro-life and we sold a lot of memberships for those individuals, and Sarah was one of those. Sarah Chung was one of those that we supported and that we sold memberships for,” said Fonseca in the interview.

“The party told her, ‘You could not run.’ Then she appealed, then the party said, ‘Never mind, you can run.’ So the party agreed with her — I don’t know, I have no idea what her appeal letter consisted of — but they obviously agreed with her,” Fonseca continued, saying the party cleared her to run before overturning its own decision.

“I don’t want to make accusations out of turn here, but as an outsider looking in, it looks like this whole thing was a frame job,” he said. “It looks like the party had decided, ‘We want to disqualify everybody, we want to essentially appoint the candidate – bypass the democratic process. We want this person, Dasong Zou, for whatever reason.'”

Fonseca claimed the party’s plan was to disqualify everybody “even though they had candidates out selling memberships for the party, bringing in money.”

Conservative party spokesperson Cory Hann said the party’s nomination rules were followed.

“It’s a rigorous process that ensures we have qualified candidates in our nominations. One of the candidate applicants met the criteria and was accepted – our current candidate, Dasong Zou,” wrote Hann in an email.

Chung posted a letter from the Campaign Life Coalition on the contact section of her campaign website.

“We regret to inform you that the CPC has disqualified our remaining pro-life nomination candidate for Scarborough-Agincourt, Ms. Sarah Chung. As a result, the party’s preferred candidate will be acclaimed, without any voting from party members in the riding,” states the letter. The letter goes on to say that the first pro-life candidate the party disqualified was Tam:

“Disallowing Allan’s candidacy was bad enough. But then, on Thursday morning November 9, the party also disqualified Sarah Chung. This set off a chaotic turn of events.”

The letter echoes Fonseca’s interview on the Chinese talk show, and states that Chung won her appeal and was told that her name would be on the ballot — but on the following Saturday Chung received another email saying the party was disqualifying her “again.”

“Essentially the party appointed a candidate, bypassing the democratic process,” says the letter.

Campaign Life Coalition wrote that “nothing can be done” and apologized to supporters who joined the party to vote for one of the pro-life candidates.

“The party’s appointed candidate is Mr. Dasong Zou,” says the letter, which includes Zou’s contact details. “We don’t know anything at all about where Mr. Zou stands on life issues.”

In a letter obtained by iPolitics which Chung sent to supporters, she wrote, “On Thursday night I was informed that I was disqualified as a candidate in this riding. I appealed to National Council. I was reinstated as a candidate. However the people that wished me to be out of the race were not finished.”